Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harvey, Richard

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HARVEY, RICHARD (d. 1623?), astrologer, was baptised 15 April 1560 at Saffron Walden, where his father, John Harvey, was a ropemaker, and was a brother of Gabriel Harvey [q. v.] and of John Harvey (d. 1592) [q. v.] He entered as a pensioner at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, on 15 June 1575; proceeded B.A. 1577–8; commenced M.A. 1581, and was elected fellow of his college. His brother Gabriel says that he read a philosophical lecture at Cambridge with applause. His first book made some stir. It was called ‘An Astrological Discourse upon the great and notable Conjunction of two Superiour Planets, Saturne and Jupiter, which shall happen on the 28 day of April 1583 … with a briefe Declaration of the Effectes which the late Eclipse of the Sunne 1582 is yet hereafter to woorke: written newly by R. H. London, 1583’ (two editions), dedicated to John (Aylmer), bishop of London. Harvey here defends judicial astrology in reply to his brother Gabriel, and foretells that on Sunday, 28 April 1583, ‘about high noone there shall happen a conjunction of two superior planets, which conjunction shall be manifested to the ignorant sort by many fierce and boysterous winds then sodenly breaking out,’ and ‘will cause great abundance of waters and much cold weather, much unwonted mischiefes and sorow.’ With this work Harvey printed ‘A Compendious Table of Phlebotomie or Bloudletting,’ of eight pages, containing an ‘auncient commendation of Phlebotomie.’ The prediction failed, and Harvey was much ridiculed. He was mocked in the tripos verses at Cambridge. ‘The whole universitie hyst at him,’ writes his own and his brother Gabriel's enemy, Nashe (Pierce Penniless, 1592), ‘Tarleton at the Theater made jests of him,’ and Elderton denounced him in ‘hundreds of ballets.’ Thomas Heath [q. v.] wrote a reply.

In 1590 Harvey published, with a dedication to the Earl of Essex, ‘A Theologicall Discovrse of the Lamb of God and his enemies.’ The work comprised the substance of sermons which, according to Nashe, had been preached three years earlier. Harvey announced that he ‘newly published’ the volume to explain his attitude to the Martin Mar-Prelate controversy. Having denounced ‘Martinisme’ and ‘Cartwrightisme,’ he seemed disposed to take a middle line between the bishops and their opponents, and to reserve his severest language for the ‘poets and writers’ who had taken part in the dispute. He is charged by Nashe with ‘misterming’ the poets ‘piperly makeplaies and make-bates.’ Harvey plunged more boldly into the ‘Marprelate’ strife with an anonymous tract entitled ‘Plaine Percevall, the Peacemaker of England, sweetly indevoring with his blunt persuasions to botch up a reconciliation betwixt Mart-on and Mart-other,’ 1590? Here he veered to the puritan side of the controversy, and made specially contemptuous mention of the tract entitled ‘The Pappe with a Hatchet,’ ascribed to John Lyly. Harvey's abuse of the men of letters excited Greene to pen the libellous attack on Harvey and his brothers Gabriel and John, which appeared in the original edition (now lost) of ‘A Quippe for an Upstart Courtier’ (1592). In the literary quarrel which followed between Gabriel Harvey and Nashe, Greene's champion, Nashe satirised Richard Harvey as unsparingly as Gabriel. He parodied Richard's ‘Astrological Discourse’ of 1583 in ‘A Wonderfull, strange, and miraculous Astrologicall Prognostication,’ 1592. In his ‘Strange Newes of the Intercepting of certain Letters,’ 1592, Nashe spoke of Richard as ‘a notable ruffian with his pen, having first took upon him in the blundering Persivall to play the Iacke of both sides 'twixt Martin and us’ (Nashe, Works, ed. Grosart, ii. 196), and he savagely ridiculed Harvey's ‘Theologicall Discourse of the Lamb of God.’ In his ‘Haue with you to Saffron Walden’ (1596), Nashe charged Richard with all manner of offences, and reported Kit Marlowe's opinion of him that he was ‘an asse good for nothing but to preach of the Iron age’ (ib. iii. 125). According to Nashe, Harvey was at one time rector of Chislehurst, but lost his benefice through incompetency. Hasted (Kent, i. 104) mentions one ‘Harvie’ as rector of Chislehurst until 1623. Nashe reports (Works, iii. 119) that he eloped with and married a daughter of Thomas Mead the judge, and pacified Mead by dedicating to him an almanack. Harvey's ‘Leap Yeare. A compendious Prognostication for 1584,’ London [1583], 16mo, is dedicated to his ‘good and curtuous frende’ Mr. Thomas Meade. Richard Harvey also published: 1. ‘Mercurius sive lachrymæ in obitum D. Thomæ Smith’ (which is printed at the end of Gabriel Harvey's ‘Smithus,’ 1578). 2. ‘Ephemeron sive Pæana: in gratiam propurgatæ reformatæque dialecticæ,’ London, 1583, 8vo, dedicated to Robert, earl of Essex. 3. ‘Philadelphus, or a Defence of Brutes and the Brutans History,’ London (by Iohn Wolfe), 1593, 8vo, dedicated to the Earl of Essex, in which George Buchanan is addressed as ‘the trumpet of Scotland’ and ‘the noble scholler.’

[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 282; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 498; Gabriel Harvey's Works, ed. Grosart; Nashe's Works, ed. Grosart, vols. ii. and iii. passim; Braybrooke's Audley End, p. 291; notes supplied by Mr. R. E. Anderson.]